


NCT: The Interactive Horror Game

by lilcrabcrab



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Death, Escape, Gen, Horror, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Music Videos - Freeform, OT21 (NCT), OT7 NCT Dream, Video Game AU, Violence, WayV - Freeform, alternate universe - simulation, fair warning I kill members left right and everywhere, minus a few member because they're in wayv and dream, nct127 - Freeform, the ships aren't the main focus but what would a fic be without some gay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-01-20 22:27:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21289163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilcrabcrab/pseuds/lilcrabcrab
Summary: NCT get trapped in a game where they are forced to escape horror versions of their own MVs. When game deaths become all too real and entire worlds are messing with them at every turn, can they beat the game? And more importantly, can they all get out alive?
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten & Qian Kun, Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Lee Taeyong, Lee Jeno/Zhong Chen Le
Comments: 13
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> yea I'm back on my whumping all of nct bullshit
> 
> NCT Dream is OT7, Wayv is OT7, and 127 are just the remaining 7 (so they don't have Winwin, Mark, and Haechan, because they're with dream and wayv)
> 
> The chapter count is a tentative estimate, if I decide I want to add more levels then the count will go up. Feel free to request specific MVs that you want them to escape from.
> 
> Thank you for checking this out, I hope you enjoy <3

Jaehyun blinks, looking around as the blackness fades into a grey-ish room with strange (but ever-dull) textures adorning the walls. six other people stand next to him, and their bodies vaguely resemble that of his members, but their faces are covered by intricate masks; the only colour present in the room. When he brings his own hand up to his face, he feels wiry tassels and thick fabric.

“Welcome to Level 1: NCT 127,” a disembodied voice announces. “I am Simon, and you will do as I say.”

“What’s this?” one of the people beside Jaehyun demands. His body looks like Jungwoo’s, but his voice hardly sounds like his. Jaehyun watches as something intangible shifts and a digital clock face appears in the corner of his vision: 59:59, with every second counting down.

“Unlock your masks to escape.”

\---

Scanners move up and down Xiaojun’s body, and the white bars of the booth spin around him. After a while, he is let out onto the tarmac of an airport, and then into a plane. Lucas and Winwin are there already, and he waits as the rest file in. As Kun takes his seat, words appear on every screen in the plane: WELCOME TO LEVEL 1: WAYV.

Only seconds later, the plane starts moving, and Xiaojun finds himself holding onto the armrest tightly in alarm - there is something shaky and erratic about this take off. When they are finally up in the air and going relatively smoothly, he notices that the numbers 59:58 have appeared in the corner of his eye, and watches them tick down with growing fear. The word ‘romanticist’ appears just below the clock.

“Guys, are you seeing what I-”

A bang sounds from somewhere in the front of the plane - the pilot’s cockpit, he realises. He sees Yangyang get up and make his way there, and reaches out to steady himself when the plane tips violently to one side. Static appears on all of the entertainment screens, flashes of random scenes coming out for split seconds.

“The pilot has died,” a crackling voice says across the intercom. Yangyang reaches the door to the cockpit, pulling on it hard before turning around and yelling that it’s locked.

“Land the plane safely to move on to level 2.”

\---

The first thing that Chenle knows is that he’s running. Everything around him is neon lights and dark living night and his feet are already pounding down the sidewalk, streetlights flying by him without him even thinking to run. Six other boys run with him, their panting and footsteps loud in his ears.

Mark, running in the very front, ducks into an alleyway and comes to a stop. The rest of them follow, and Chenle sees an open door in the side of the wall. His vision fades to a greyish tint for a split second, and words appear suspended in front of him.

WELCOME TO LEVEL 1: NCT DREAM

A clock counts down the seconds and minutes from an hour, and it remains in a corner even after his vision returns to normal. Suddenly, something crashes behind them, and Chenle whips around to see nothing.

"Get to the subway station and onto the train to escape me," something growls, sounding like a strange mix of every adult that has ever terrorised Chenle. Renjun and Jisung are already running into the building, but Chenle is frozen, staring at the darkness behind them.

"Go," Jeno yells from beside him, "go, go!"

The shadows tighten, and the clock reads 58:12.

Chenle goes. Fast.

\---

Pulling at the masks does nothing. Echoes of his own voice struggling and begging for help surround Jaehyun as he tugs at every part of the mask blindly, trying in vain to slip his fingers in the place where it attaches to his neck.

It is all to no avail. The mask seems to have become a part of his being, and it starts to hurt the skin of his face as he tries harder. In a last ditch attempt, he brings his fingers up to his eyes, looking for an opening there, but he only finds glass that he wouldn’t dare shatter so close to his eyes. His fingers, tapping on the glass, have red under the nails, and when he brings his hands back to his neck, carefully, he feels a strange moisture staining the fabric.

“Stop,” Simon booms out, and Jaehyun drops his hands to his sides immediately. Directly in his line of sight, he sees two others do the same, but one person - long lanky limbs identifying him unmistakably as Johnny - keeps working at the mask as if he had not heard. Suddenly, his fingers twitch, spasming to a stop. He screams out, hands fighting some invisible force until they finally come to rest, pinned at his sides as well.

It is silent, afterwards. Fearful to even move his eyes, Jaehyun stares straight ahead, watching Johnny’s now frozen figure. “Well done,” Simon says. “You may now move.’

“Johnny!” Two members cry out in unison, running towards him. Johnny is still frozen, the rapid movement of his chest as he breathes the only evidence that he’s still alive. A computer monitor comes alive at one end of the room, displaying 7 identical silhouettes with one crossed out, and “33%, 1 second”.

“Look at that-” Jaehyun says, at the same time as the other two standing next to him who see it. The number changes to 50%, 2 seconds. Understanding starts to dawn on Jaehyun, and he turns to the man (with a body that looks like Yuta’s) beside him. “On the count of three, recite the national anthem, okay?”

He nods, and attempts to say a few words in Japanese to make it clearer that it’s him. As the words leave his mouth, the lighting of the entire room turns a dark, bloody red, and Yuta’s mouth opens but no words at all come out. Under one figure on the screen, a small x appears - it looks like there’s space for two more.

“It’s uniqueness,” someone says - Jaehyun dares not guess who it is. “If we do something that only we can do, we get a strike or something, like wait, watch this-” He sings out a startlingly powerful high note, one distinguishable even when it sounds like Jaehyun’s own voice to him. The room turns red again for a second, and another cross appears under one of the silhouettes.

“Taeil,” Jaehyun breathes, “Taeil, you genius.” Both Yuta and Taeil have lost their voices - that leaves only Jaehyun, Taeyong, Jungwoo and Doyoung able to talk. He doesn’t try to identify the other three, although he has a pretty good idea already. One of them comes up to Jaehyun, but before he can speak, he is cut off by Simon.

“Walk,” Simon says, and a circular path appears in the center of the room. The six of them that can move rush to get onto the path. Jaehyun gets the distinct feeling that if he were to try to stray off the path, Simon would stop him, although he doesn’t know how. Doesn’t want to know.

“Fuck this, Simon, just tell us how to unlock them,” someone says. Jaehyun thinks he can feel the very room shake in silent laughter.

“You may receive one hint,” Simon eventually says. Jaehyun almost stops walking in shock. “But in return, you must make a sacrifice.”

“Okay, I will, I’ll be the sacrifice,” Taeyong says immediately, and before Jaehyun can tell him no, Simon is cutting him off.

“I didn’t say you get to choose. Go into the center of the circle, Johnny.” Johnny suddenly breaks out of his frozen state and takes one robotic step towards them, and then another. The steps don’t even look like it’s Johnny taking them, but he does as he is told. When he is in the middle, a table appears around him, with 6 identical guns lying in front of each of the other members. The clock in the corner of Jaehyun’s vision reads 21:07.

“Stop walking and stand in the same place. Would you like your hint?”

\---

Yangyang pushes desperately at the door to the cockpit of the plane, cursing as it does nothing but rattle violently in its metal frame. Fuck! someone come help,” he yells, but Lucas’s leather-gloved hands joining him on the handle do nothing.

“Can’t we unlock it with something other than brute force?” Winwin strides across the aisle, thumbing at a remote absent-mindedly. It doesn’t seem to be connected to anything that Xiaojun can see. “See if there’s a code somewhere, these are bound to be automated.”

Xiaojun slides into a seat to mess with the entertainment screens. The static continues no matter which buttons he presses, and he’s about to give up when he notices a pair of old metal wings repeatedly showing in between the glitchy static. “Guys, take a look at this, what do you think those mean? They look like a pair of wings-” Pressing his fingers into the screen directly where the wings join seems to make the image a little less shaky, so he leaves them there as he cranes his neck around to look at the image underneath his hand.

Suddenly Ten, standing behind Yangyang and Lucas at the door, points up at something above the door. “Hey, can any of you read that? Looks like there are words above that emblem thing.”

Lucas finally stops trying to punch the door down and straightens up. “N- C- T- interactive honor game?” he spells out. “Wait, horror. Not honor.” He furrows his brow, confused. “So that’s why we’re here? We’re in a… a game or something?”

“And it’s a horror one as well, apparently,” Hendery pipes up from behind. As if on cue, the lights lining the overhead bins turn off, replaced by dim and unsettling red mood lighting. The image disappears from underneath Xiaojun’s hand, replaced by a screaming face. Crackles and pops erupt from the speakers, and Xiaojun jumps back in alarm.

“Winwin, what even is that remote thing?” Kun yells, jaw tight in an attempt not to panic.

“I don’t know, I’ve just had it since the start.”

“Does it connect to anything?”

“I said I don’t know, it just.” He looks it over, pressing a few buttons. “There, does that do anything?”

For a moment nothing happens, and then something behind Xiaojun whirs to life. The seats at the back of the plane start moving, splitting apart down the middle and unfolding like petals. Xiaojun is about to move closer to investigate when the plane suddenly shakes and rolls a little to the other side, unbalancing him. He lands on the floor, hard, and at the same time, at least a hundred tiny flying robots flood out of the opened seats.

Winwin presses another button and the robots assemble in a swarm near the ceiling. Not robots, Xiaojun realises. Drones.

“Well, that’s certainly something,” Hendery says, pressing himself against a wall to avoid them. “A-anything else you can do with them?”

“Hold on.” He sucks the side of his lip into his mouth as he looks as the buttons, trying to read the letters on them in the dim lighting. “Most of them just have one letter on them, I can't tell what they do.”

Looking over his shoulder, Yangyang points at something. “That one says L, maybe for lock? Try that, maybe it’ll open the door.”

Before Winwin can decide whether that’s a good idea or not, the plane tilts again, and Yangyang stumbles into him, pressing the button.

Everyone in the cabin holds their breath for a second. Out of the corner of his eye, Xiaojun swears he sees the entertainment screens switch to the wings again, and then to a crazy laughing face. There’s overwhelming noise as every single one of the drones turns on Lucas, tiny flashes of lasers lighting up the air in the plane.

“Make it stop, Winwin, make it fucking stop,” Ten is screaming, and Winwin is screaming back that he doesn’t know how, desperately jabbing at random keys. Lucas is on the ground, body convulsing, and the drones are still firing, bullets of light and fire hitting Lucas’s skin from all directions. The wings flash on the screen again, and with sick certainty, Xiaojun knows.

“Winwin, chuck me the remote,” he yells, and Winwin manages to throw it in Xiaojun’s general direction, close enough that it skids to a halt just by Xiaojun’s feet. He picks it up, eyes scanning over the letters desperately, and there it is - a little emblem of a pair of wings on a switch hidden at the back of the device.

When he flicks the switch, the drones stop firing immediately, and he thinks he’s succeeded, but then doubts himself when they start moving again. He is about to flick the switch back off when he notices that they seem to be flying into some sort of formation by the door.

“I hear something on the other side of the door,” Yangyang exclaims. “Like little whirring wings there as well.” He makes a move to listen closer, but has to duck out of the way as the formation of drones scythes towards the door that he had been standing right in front of.

One drone connects with the door handle, fitting perfectly with the mechanism. The rest attach behind it, forming the shape of a wing exactly like those Xiaojun saw on the screens.

Slowly, majestically, the entire formation waves back and forth, and the door starts to slide back. Even more of the same drones are revealed on the other side, doing the exact same thing. They form the other side of the wings.

When the door is fully open, they see a mangled body lying inside. Hendery steps over it as he walks over to investigate the dashboard, and the rest of the group follow until all six of them are standing in the cockpit. The door slides shut behind them with a bang, trapping them in.

Lucas lies on the other side, no longer moving.

\---

The inside of the building seems to be nothing but corridors: endless passages lined on one side with large rough beige bricks and on the other with uneven stone coated in old white paint. Large metal venting tubes criss-cross the ceiling, hissing and rumbling with sound. The ground is concrete, and it echoes beneath Chenle’s feet as he runs. It sounds hollow and impenetrably solid at the same time.

Chenle can’t tell if all the echoes are from the other members’ footsteps or if they’re something worse, if they’re roars and muttering and banging from whatever it is that pursues them.

Although the corridors don’t change, there’s something tangible about the air that makes sure Chenle knows that they’re going deeper and deeper into the building. They’ve been running for so long - he checks the clock in the corner of his vision and sees 41:26. He feels so close to collapsing; doesn’t know whether the breath in his throat is acid or air.

But he doesn’t dare stop. The presence of the being that chases them presses down on his back, urging him on. Jisung and Renjun are a few steps behind him - Mark leads in the front, looking back to check on the rest of them every minute or so. They’re all still here. They’re fine.

Chenle runs with no thoughts left in his mind but terror, the word “go” repeating in his mind like a mantra.

All of a sudden, the hallway stops. They’re running then suddenly they’re not, and Mark is pulling to a panicked stop in front of a solid wall. When Chenle turns around, he can see the monster even if it doesn’t have form - he sees locked doors and confiscated objects and the frustration of having no out.

It’s all around him. Closing in without even moving.

In desperation, Haechan throws himself at the wall of the dead-end. It bruises his shoulder something terrible, but doesn’t budge. There’s no voice left in Chenle’s breath, just harsh, dragging gasps as his body fights for air. “Haechan,” he manages to get out, bent over in pain.

“It’s nothing, there’s nothing, we’re trapped,” Haechan is saying, leaning spent again the wall. “How were we supposed to win this god forsaken game in the first place? There’s no way!”

Chenle is about to collapse for real when Renjun pushes past him, causing him to look up in surprise. “What do you mean nothing, there’s literally,” he grunts, feeling around the wall and then pushing something in with the heel of his hand, “there’s literally an opening here.”

Everyone stands in dumbfounded shock as a small concealed stone disappears into the wall, crashing down on the other side. Loud echoes make their way back to their corridor. There’s something big and open on the other side, whatever it is.

Renjun crouches down, peering into the hole. “There’s a massive warehouse or something on the other side but I don’t know how we could get there,” he says.

The thing growls behind them; humanlike and animalistic at the same time. Jisung jumps, letting out a squeak.

“Is that stone up there a little out of place as well?” Jeno asks. Jumping, he knocks on it, and it makes a satisfying click as he does so. He lands in a crouch, and as his feet make hard contact with the ground, the wall starts to fall away, stones at the top cracking and tumbling down to the other side.

“Hurry,” Jaemin hisses, looking back into the darkness. Chenle wonders if Jaemin sees the same thing as he sees in the nothingness. Whatever it is, it chases them all with the same bone-chilling horror.

When enough stones have fallen, Jeno leaps over the rest of the crumbling wall and lands on the other side messily but uninjured. Stumbling a little, he grabs some of the rubble for balance, then plants his foot into a crevice in the broken stones and holds his hand out to help another member down.

“Come, quickly!” The growling and threatening words from the hallway are growing ever louder. Chenle runs over, jumping over the falling stones and staggering into Jeno’s solid chest. When he rights himself, the wall has stopped breaking, and a barrier almost a meter and a half high remains.

Renjun, Jaemin and Jisung clamber over it easily, Mark pushing them gently to help them get over faster. Chenle can see the darkness looming closer and closer behind the remaining two, and he wants to scream out in warning but fears that it would somehow aggravate it. He doesn’t know. Anything could aggravate it. It’s never happy, never going to be happy, no matter what he does-

_Stay quiet, Chenle._

“Go, fucking go, Haechan,” Mark is yelling, and Chenle comes to his senses to see that the darkness is holding onto Mark already, his form fading and flickering.

Haechan’s screams are rough with tears and fear. “No, you go!”

“It’s too late-” Mark all but picks Haechan up and places him on top of the wall. “Haechan, please.”

Haechan holds onto Mark’s hand tightly, refusing to let go. “I’m not, Mark, I’m not leaving you-” Before he can finish, he draws back his hand as if it had touched fire, gasping. Something covers Mark’s entire being, and he glitches (eyes wide, wide open) and disappears.

Haechan falls backwards onto the other side of the wall, gaze still locked on the darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My beta was literally comatose so this is very late but things will be back on schedule next weekend <3 And yes the tags have changed because I couldn't resist developing a bit of gay
> 
> Please enjoy and comment :D

Jaehyun looks down at the knives, then up at Johnny. It isn’t hard to guess what Simon will ask them to do - there is only a small mercy in the fact that Simon has not yet ordered it from them. That gives them a choice.

Not that they want to make this choice.

“Don’t. Don’t do it.” Jungwoo looks around wildly, as if a solution will appear before him if he looks hard enough. “None of you guys are going to do this, there’s another option, there must be-”

Taeil tugs at Jungwoo’s sleeve urgently, shaking his head. He’s pointing at the ceiling, and then at them, and making some strange gesture as if to sweep them all into his arms. Jaehyun can’t figure out for the life of him what he means, and neither can Jungwoo: he shakes him off, spinning around physically in his mad search for an answer.

“There’s something, wait, let me go!” Jungwoo’s voice reaches a fever pitch - no one is brave enough to yell back at him. “We can’t just give up like this, we can’t do this to Johnny.”

At the mention of Johnny’s name, Taeyong whimpers, crouching into a ball on the ground. His feet stay planted on the path that they had walked; he has the sense to continue to obey Simon, at least.

Not so for Jungwoo.

Jungwoo breaks away from the rest of them, running off the path faster than any of them can stop them. Yuta and Doyoung twitch, starting towards him, but no one dares to move from their position. Jungwoo’s face is contorted in fearful hysteria, and in this moment, one would not be faulted for fearing him more than anything else in the room. He chases something that no one can see; perhaps chases nothing but the concept of being away from Simon’s bounds and the task he was about to force upon them.

The rebuke comes after only a few seconds of delay. Jungwoo is picked up by some invisible force and dragged back to the table and the guns, body stiffening and then growing limp in the hand of Simon. When he is set back down, his legs crumple beneath him, and he pushes himself up with his arms, gasping for air as if he’s submerged in some unseeable poison.

Will the rest of you play nicely, now?” Simon’s even, cold voice intones, once Jungwoo has gone quiet. “Would you like your hint?”

Jaehyun looks at each of the members in turn, noticing all too acutely Yuta and Taeil motioning in attempts at communication, and Jungwoo’s broken figure on the ground, still breathing and talking, but blatantly half-paralysed. His eyes finally land on Johnny’s hopeless, pleading face, and out of the corner of his eye, he can see the rest of the members coming to the same conclusion that he has.

“Yes,” Doyoung finally says, voice cracking at the end. “Please give us the hint.”

“For me to give you the hint, you will do exactly what I tell you to do next.”

Jaehyun narrows his eyes in contempt. “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?”

He is almost certain that Simon casts derisive glances at Jungwoo and Johnny even without the eyes or physical form to do so. His question is ignored for an uncomfortable minute, until Simon speaks again.

“Say yes.”

“Yes,” five members chorus (the screen to the side shifts, but Jaehyun hardly notices). Yuta and Taeil mouth the word, then, testing their voices, say it aloud as well. The grins and would-be shouts of relief are wiped out immediately after they have said this, their voices snatched away from them once again.

“Everyone except Johnny, grab the gun in front of you.” Johnny moves to cover himself, as if it would help. “And Johnny, hands up.”

With shaking hands, Jaehyun reaches out and takes the gun, feeling the hefty weight of it in his palm. The weight of his friend’s life lies in that gun. The barrel shimmers, artificial ceiling lights reflecting on the metal.

When he looks up, not a single gun is still lying on the table.

The screen in the side of the room flickers, numbers changing to 100%, 14 seconds. A white progress bar at the bottom is filled up to about a quarter.

“Well done.” Simon’s voice is calm, emotionless without being robotic. Jaehyun realises that he doesn’t know whether he’d be more scared if Simon were a human or a machine. “Raise the gun to point it at Johnny’s chest.”

Six trembling arms are raised. The screen says 23 seconds: the progress bar is almost at a half.

“Pull the trigger.”

Six fingers tighten and squeeze.

One bang echoes across the room.

\---

“So we have to fly this thing.” Hendery runs his index finger over a few buttons, but knows better than to press them. “Any of us have ‘plane-flyer’ as our thing?”

“I’m just romanticist,” Xiaojun says. “Nothing useful.”

“Well I’m posh, that’s even less so.”

“I’ve got racer,” Yangyang says, “and Winwin told me he was drone racer from the start.”

Ten and Kun are standing in the corner, looking at a manual rather than participating in the conversation. After a while, Kun turns around, flicking his eyes over the monitors and controls.

“My word is jetset,” he says, with forced evenness in his voice. “I suppose it’s down to me.”

Kun sinks into the pilot’s chair, looking over every control before resting his hand on the handles of the yoke, gripping tightly before giving a few experimental movements. The plane responds easily, and he breathes out a sigh of relief. At least one thing is going okay in this game.

After testing out as many of the more basic functions as possible, Kun thinks he can tentatively call himself jetset. He’s able to fly the plane, at any rate, so that means they have a chance of getting out-

Out, but to where?

“D-does anyone know where we are?” Kun looks around at blank, blanching faces. “There’s usually a way to find out, these monitors usually display it.” He leans over to investigate the black screens in front of him.

Pressing a button at the bottom makes the screen flicker to life, and a network of sensor programmes starts to boot up. Maps of the ground show that they’re over an ocean, but there’s an island somewhere to the left. Xiaojun bends over the control panel to look. “Is that a text box on the island? Any way to zoom up on that?”

Kun is about to respond when an ominous bang sounds from the side. Another monitor flickers on, showing external camera feed of the plane, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what has happened.

One of the engines on the right wing has blown, smoke and sparks rising from it and setting part of the wing alight. The plane dives crazily to one side, and Kun scrambles to right it. When he pushes at the throttle, nothing happens, and the entire aircraft stills.

Slowly (but far too fast), the altitude graph at the bottom of the map starts to drop.

“Emergency fuel supply,” Ten shouts, the control manual crumpling in his hold. “There’s a control somewhere, Yangyang, do you see it?”

Holding onto Kun’s seat for dear life as the plane rolls and shifts, Yangyang scans the overhead panel. The entire cockpit is shaking violently, and there’s hardly enough space to stand without either stepping on the body of the pilot or knocking each other over and into the controls. When the plane gives an especially brutal shift, the internal map monitors blink and turn off: any attempts to revive them are met with alarming noises and little success.

Finally, Yangyang finds something and punches it on. A rumbling erupts from the belly of the aircraft, and the altitude stops dropping.

“Okay. Good.” Kun lets out a long-held breath. “But we still have no idea where the fuck to go.”

Winwin nibbles his lip, then speaks up. “Are we able to open the doors in the cabin?”

“Why? Are you crazy? Why would we want to do that?” Xiaojun glances at Winwin’s fidgeting hands: he’s somehow got the remote for the drones again.

“I think there are cameras on these drones, so they can maybe scout for us? There are a few left outside in the cabin.” He fiddles with a few buttons and a telltale whirring sound starts up from the other side of the door. “I don’t know how else we can scout for a place to land since the map is out and we can’t see shit from the windshield.”

It’s clear that no one is willing to trust the drones, but the view (or lack of it) leaves them with little choice. With the clock in the corner of his vision reading 14:37, Xiaojun starts looking over the monitors to see if they could connect with the drones.

“Is there a C on the remote?” he asks. Winwin looks for a while and the nods. “Try pressing it.”

With a click of a button, the screen in the cockpit comes alive once again, showing a camera feed of the cabin on the other side of the locked door. Winwin moves the drones around a little, and sure enough, the camera moves around.

“I’m opening the cabin door to the outside now,” Yangyang says. “Here goes nothing.”

Another bang sounds out as the door opens, and the sound of rushing wind is intense enough that it drowns out their voices in the sound-proofed cockpit. From the windshield, they watch as a hundred drones flood out and hover around the plane, unsettlingly close to the important parts.

“We’re really trusting these things?” Hendery asks, and no one answers.

With the push of a key, Winwin orders the drones forward.

\---

Chenle detaches himself from Jeno and looks around at the place they’ve made their way into. There is a short between-space, and then the area opens out into a massive warehouse, with metal bars lining the walls in random-looking patterns. It is lit only by dim light coming from a few faulty bulbs on their side; the other end of it is obscured in murky darkness. There’s no way to see how large this place really is.

Seven bikes lie in a pile to one side, and Chenle wanders over to investigate. Haechan is still on the ground, frozen in shock. Jaemin and Jisung try to get him to calm down and stand up, while Jeno picks up the rocks, attempting to put them back in place.

“Let’s take these bikes and go,” Chenle says, picking one up and riding back around to the rest of the group. “It’s not going to wait, we have to get going.”

Jeno grunts with the effort of picking up the rocks. “Not if we block this entrance up, it seems like it can’t fit in anything too small. Otherwise it would have gotten in by now, wouldn’t it?”

Just as he says this, the stones he had managed to replace shake and dislodge themselves again. The rest of the wall, which hadn’t even fallen when they went over, splinters and explodes out, completely destroyed. A sort of emptiness starts to seep its way into the warehouse, moving in to suck all the warmth out of the already desolate room. Jeno only just manages to jump back in time, running over to the bikes and hopping onto one immediately.

Renjun has hardly caught his breath, but he’s getting up and running over as well, grabbing a bike and taking off into the darkness. Jaemin and Jisung follow. Haechan is still lying there, and Chenle stares helpless as the invisible darkness approaches.

When it seems to touch Haechan, he finally gets up, running at top speed to the bikes. The dark grazes his back the whole way.

Within seconds, all six of them are riding into the distant uncertainty of the other side of the warehouse, not sparing a single glance back at the crumbled wall behind them. Although the other side is dark and unlit, the hunter behind them is so much more so.

Static warehouse air rushes through Chenle’s hair as he urges himself on faster and faster. The feeling of his legs burning at the effort of the ride is the only sensation he can feel. The dim light from the entrance (already so far away) is hardly enough for him to make out the shadowy blurs of his friends in front of him. He blocks out the rest of the world and pushes on, relying on the sound of the other bikes and the feeling that he’s being chased to guide him.

Suddenly, bikes are skidding to hasty stops and Chenle squeezes the handbrake so hard that his front wheel lifts off. His foot slams down on the ground to balance him, and the bike clatters to the ground.

Weak lights flicker on, showing a smooth wall with one plain door set into it. Jeno walks up to it and tries the handle. It opens easily.

They stumble into a room the size of an average bedroom, slamming the door shut behind them. Their pursuer bangs on it, hinges rattling and the entire room shaking.

The only light in the room comes from a few bottles sitting on a table. The contents are bright blue and green, and look like they’re glowing. Jisung picks one up and holds it up like a makeshift light - from it, Chenle can vaguely see that there are no other exits. The wall is smooth and solid.

The banging on the door is so very sentient, ebbing and flowing like a thing that breathes, but ever persistent and present.

“So we’re trapped,” Haechan states, sounding like he’s beyond caring. He flops down onto the mattress that takes up half the room.

Renjun picks up one of the bottles, looking at it curiously. Jaemin watches him from his place sitting on the mattress as well. “Drink it,” he says.

“Why?” Renjun looks at him incredulously. “You think this some Alice in Wonderland shit or something?”

“Just do it.” Jaemin gets up and grabs the final one on the table, unscrewing it and sniffing at the contents. “We’re gonna die anyways, right? Maybe this really is some wonderland shit.” Before anyone can tell him no, he brings the bottle to his lips and takes a massive swig.

Immediately, Jaemin’s form glitches and disappears. Chenle thinks he might have imagined it, but at the last second, it was almost as if he smiled.

Haechan jumps up, fists balled in anger. “You see that? Are you fucking seeing that? It’s just like what happened when the thing got Mark, oh my god!” He picks up the bottle that Jaemin had left behind with half its contents spilled on the ground, just about to tip the rest of it on the ground before Jeno grabs his arm to stop him.

“Yea? You think that? Sure, except Mark looked like his world was ending but in that last glitch Jaemin looked like he had something good to tell us.” Jeno clutches the drink so hard that his hand shakes. “I don’t know anything but, do we even have a choice?”

A particularly loud bang sounds behind them, a door hinge flying off at the impact. With that, Jeno downs half of the remaining drink. He too glitches and then disappears, a hopeful smile making its way onto his face in the last split second.

“I’m gonna do it,” Renjun announces, opening his bottle and drinking of it as well. Another hinge flies off the door, and Chenle feels the tell-tale emptiness flood in again. He reaches out and catches the bottle as it falls from the place that Renjun’s hand used to be.

Chenle glances at Jisung and sees him open his bottle and bring it to his lips as well, but he hesitates before drinking, looking to Chenle first. “Haechan,” Chenle says, but Haechan is shaking his head and walking to the open doorway where the shadows are streaming in.

“Haechan!”

It swallows him whole.

Chenle and Jisung take the drink together, eyes locked on each other and glowing blue sliding down their throats with the taste of an escape and a mistake rolled into one.

\---

When Johnny crumples to the ground, Taeil and Doyoung rush to him, hands grabbing all over him as if that could revive him somehow. Six bullet holes litter his chest, and Taeil’s hand covering one only makes the blood seem so much brighter, painting Taeil’s palm and dripping down his wrist.

If Taeil could have screamed, Jaehyun knows that he would have.

The ones that can speak are shocked into silence, some still clutching the gun with white knuckles and trembling arms. Taeyong slowly, mechanically moves to grab Doyoung’s shoulders and pull him away from Johnny’s body, hardly reacting as he thrashes and yells and then goes still, sinking into Taeyong’s arms.

“Babe, let’s just get out alive.” He hears Taeyong whispering to Doyoung, and silent tears fall from Doyoung’s lashes as he nods, turning around to bury his face into the side of Taeyong’s neck. “Let’s survive for his sake.”

“Congratulations, you can now receive your hint,” Simon says.

Jaehyun nods, then speaks up. “Yes, please give us the hint.”

Simon pauses for far too long, and Jaehyun almost believes that he’s going to betray them, but then, an ominous buzzing and crackling starts up from the screens on the side of the room. They had completely neglected to look at those screens for god knows how long, and when Jaehyun looks at them now, he sees that one of the silhouettes is completely gone. The progress bar is at 0 again, and a smaller bar underneath it indicates that the HIGH SCORE is somewhere around two thirds of the bar filled.

“As you can see, your goal is to fill the progress bar completely,” Simon says. “This will unlock your masks and let you escape.”

“Okay, but how?” Jaehyun finally drops the gun and walks over to the screen, studying the display.

“That’s for you to find out,” Simon replies. “If you had been observant, you’d already know.”

“How were we supposed to be observant when you were crippling our teammates every few minutes?” Doyoung lifted his head off of Taeyong’s chest to yell this at the ceiling, as if Simon were some wayward god.

“I was only trying to help you,” Simon says. “Now that they can’t do these things, things should be a lot easier.”

“What,” Doyoung starts, but suddenly realising something, Jaehyun cuts him off.

“Remember what Taeil said? That they got penalties for being unique.” Jaehyun gestures at the screens, talking quickly now that he thinks he has an idea. “So it would make sense that we get rewarded for doing things the same, and that’s why-”

“That’s why the progress bar increased when we were doing,” Taeyong butts in, looking at Johnny remorsefully, “that. We did it all together.”

There is a pregnant pause as everyone takes this in. There is little fault to the realisation, and it seems as if they should have realised much earlier.

If they had, maybe more of them would be healthy right now. Alive, even.

“Well done,” Simon says, and Jaehyun can almost imagine that the dreary grey-blue lighting turns just the tiniest bit warner as he says it. “Pick up your friend and put him to the side.”

With escape visible on the horizon, they immediately do what they’re told: Doyoung and Taeyong slide their hands under Johnny’s back to support it, while Taeil and Yuta move to hold onto his arms. Even Jungwoo is mercifully granted the ability to walk again. He and Jaehyun picked up Johnny’s legs, maneuvering the stiffening limbs until they look less mangled and walked along with the rest to place him on the side of the room. Without really even thinking of it, they march in unison, setting him down gently.

From the corner of his eye, Jaehyun sees the bar on the screen increasing, duly. Fingers (red fingers, fingers stained in blood) itching to cover the horrific sight in front of him, he stands motionless, waiting for Simon’s next command.

“Repeat after me,” Simon says. “I am nothing. I do only what Simon says.”

Jaehyun doesn’t even dare look at the others, just opens his mouth and speaks. “I am nothing. I do only what Simon says.” Five other voices chorus around him, and the bar increases steadily.

“Now turn to face the wall, those of you who are not already.” It is clear that he means the one against which Johnny’s body lies. With the body between the wall and them, they turn, trying not to look down.

“Walk forward.” Jaehyun hears Taeyong choke back a sob as he realises the only place forward that they can walk. The bar is still increasing, but momentarily stalls; out of the corner of his eye, he sees that there’s around one sixth of it left.

Pretending not to notice the soft feeling beneath his feet, Jaehyun walks; pretending not to feel the way that he’s stepping on something that he doesn’t want to think about. If there is a cracking sound, he does not pay it any attention. When his body is pressed to the wall in front of him, with nowhere further to go, this wall falls down, and fabric falls from his face. The mask falls to his feet (softly, even the hard glass eyepiece meeting a soft soft landing), and words appear in the space where the wall used to be.

“Congratulations,” it says. “Touch here to move on the level 2.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO sorry that I disappeared for almost half a year, shit happened. But this girl is back on her fic bullshit once again so here, please enjoy this! Perhaps, PERHAPS, regular uploads may be happening.

At first, the camera feed of the drones shows nothing but the wide, grey, sky and sea, exactly the same as what can be seen from the windshield. With a little bit of experimentation, Winwin works out how to make the drones spread out from each other, and Xiaojun watches as the camera feeds split so that there are 9 on each screen. 45 drones in total, panning out in front of them, with coordinates showing at the bottom of each drone’s view.

“The island with the textbox was kinda to the left, wasn’t it?” Xiaojun gestures to the side, leaning over Winwin’s shoulder to see the remote. 

“Something like that, yea.” Winwin taps a sequence of keys and selects a few drones, setting them on a course in the general direction. The rest he sends off randomly.

For a long time, there’s nothing. Xiaojun watches the seconds tick down in the corner of his vision and starts considering what will happen to them when the time runs out. At least the drones are far away from them now, so the 6 of them won’t end up like Lucas, but it’s little comfort. He’s sure there are far worse ways the game could end for them.

Suddenly, a beeping noise is heard through the speakers. Xiaojun jumps, looking around wildly, but nothing looks like immediate danger. 

“Hey, are you guys seeing this?” Yangyang’s voice cuts through the beeping as he leans over Kun’s shoulder to point at a screen. “Top right of the far left monitor, looks like there’s an island or something.”

“And there’s something hovering above it as well,” Ten points out, stalking closer to look. “Is that the text box we saw before? How come it shows on the drone’s feed as well?”

As soon as the words leave his mouth, the screen changes to a bright green block of color, and the beeping stops. As they watch, parts of the green fall away, turning into black, until they can make out five words: “Finish here for Dream Launch.” Seconds later, these words disappear as well, returning the screen to the drone camera feeds once again.

Xiaojun frowns. “Dream Launch… what could that be?”

Completely ignoring this uncertainty, Kun is already firing off orders, hands gripped tight on the yoke and eyes locked on the bleak view from the windshield. “Winwin, can you use a drone near us to work out the coordinates? And get it to tail us once you know.” Two smooth flicks at buttons and the plane slows, gliding forward on leftover momentum. “Was anyone watching close enough to know approximately which direction the one that found land went?”

Four heads shake. Kun exhales with forced steadiness. Winwin, too focussed on the remote to have heard the second question, bites his lip, eyes flickering between the screen and the buttons on his controller, and then calls out “17.27, -25.14. Approximately. Longitude increasing, latitude staying pretty steady.”

“The drone that found the island is at 14.00, -53.73,” Hendery adds. Kun curses under his breath, commanding the engines to fire up to full strength again.

“You guys might want to hold on tight,” he says, and then the plane is leaning violently to the side as it makes a sharp turn to the right, turning so far around that they’re almost heading back the way that they were coming. The sound of wind roaring past fills the plane even more loudly than it had when they first opened the doors to the outside, and Yangyang hastily goes to try to shut them.

“What about the other drones,” Winwin yells. Ten turns to look at him like he’s crazy.

“It’s not like we need them anymore, right? And definitely not in here.” Hendery shrugs. “Once we get to the island, we’ll be done.”

“But the island doesn’t necessarily mean we’re done, it just says dream launch,” Xiaojun says. The clock in the corner of his vision is on 4:17.

Kun checks the coordinates of the drone following them, and gives a particularly aggressive twist of the controls. “It says finish here, that means finish!” His face is locked in fear and concentration, and he only barely relaxes when Ten comes up behind him and starts to squeeze his shoulders in support.

“Either way, we’ve got like three minutes left, if it’s not the correct finish it’s still the end of the game.” Winwin lets the remote drop from his hand, thudding onto the ground in front of him, and sits down, back against the door and head in his hands. 

“Okay, we’re descending now,” Kun calls out, voice cracking in the middle. “And we’re doing it quickly.” Xiaojun has just grabbed the edge of Kun’s seat to steady himself before his stomach drops into the clouds below them and they’re falling, altitude dropping at a rate that no commercial pilot would call safe.

The time left reads 1:36, and the island is only just in view in the windscreen. “It looks like there’s a runway kind of around to the left,” Hendery says. Kun gives a curt nod and alters his course slightly to line up with it.

The landing knocks the breath out of Xiaojun’s lungs, and he stumbles, clutching onto Yangyang’s shoulder to steady himself. The entire aircraft shudders and sparks, threatening to explode. Xiaojun can hear the panicked screech of the brakes and tires of the landing gear on the tarmac, so overwhelming that it seems to rise and fall with the rhythm of the last 10 seconds ticking down. The sound rings in his ears, showing no sign of stopping, until suddenly, it does.

The timer shows 0:04, then 0:03. Then, it stops.

Across every screen in the cockpit, the same sentence is shown. 

“Congratulations. Touch here to move to Level 2.”

\---

They appear on a flat expanse of concrete. A shiny red car sits in the middle, while dull metal train tracks criss cross the surface of the ground. The sun is rising over a solid concrete bridge in the distance, and it casts a golden tint on the surface of the car. It’s silent around them, and Chenle almost believes they’ve won.

Then a roaring sound starts up, getting louder and louder. Chenle spins around, trying to locate the source, but it sounds like it’s coming from everywhere and nowhere. Jeno walks up to the car, testing the door and then yanking it open. “Do you guys think this is the next step, mayb-”

Too fast to have been seen until it was too late, a train cuts across the tracks right in front of their eyes, and keeps cutting: no end seems to be in sight when it comes to the end of the train, just carriage after carriage after carriage. Eyes widening in panic, Chenle and Jisung step in closer to the car, which doesn’t happen to be crossing any tracks. For a second, Chenle leans against the gaudy red paint and gasps, the wind of the passing train threatening to blow him away.

Jaemin was less lucky. As one of the first to get here, he had already wandered further, perhaps looking for a meta exit - after all, it had seemed like they had won. Upon hearing the first train, he comes running back into the center, where the rest of the dreamies are, but it had only been the first train. Implying another.

It misses Jaemin by an inch: his foot had landed just before the train tracks, and the force of the tonnes of shuddering metal rushing past made him stumble backwards a few steps. It didn’t hit him. He regained his balance, relieved until he realised there was a bigger issue at stake.

The train cut in front of him, again and again. And kept cutting. Chenle watched through the flashing windows of each carriage as, like an old movie with insanely low frames per second, Jaemin’s face changes from confused, to angry, to desperate, to hopeless. The train does not stop, nor does it end. Flash, flash, flash, a blink for every frame, three frames for every desperate movement of his lips as he tried to shout.

They can’t hear him; the trains are too loud. They can hardly see him; the trains are too fast. And they can’t move. A third train flashes across, parallel to the first. There’s one final set of train tracks, and it runs straight across the only opening left that is wide enough for the car to pass through. None of the four trapped in the center can drive yet, but the alternative would be staying barricaded within the trains. Or running, out into the tracks, when the sound of the final train come is rising higher and higher to an unbearably deafening pitch.

“I’ll drive,” Renjun yells, hopping into to driver’s seat without waiting for anyone else’s opinion. There’s no time to protest. Jeno throws himself into the passenger seat while Jisung and cram into the back. Renjun fumbles around for a second before he manages to work out how to turn the car one, and then his foot is slammed down on the accelerator, the car swinging wildly around until he manages to get it under control. 

They shoot off in the direction of the bridge, and Chenle kneels on the plush black seats facing the back window with his face pressed up against the glass so that he sees the train pass behind them, close enough to shake the full body of the car and send it veering off course. Renjun yanks the steering wheel sharply to the right, and finally, they are pointed into the distance, far far away from the rattling, heaving trains. In the faintly invisible edge of Chenle’s peripheral vision, he hears the darkness shout. He knows the rest do as well.

“Go!”

As they drive the surroundings plunge back into darkness: going a little faster brings the dawn back, while going a little slower heightens the black. It’s the thing that chases them, this they know without having to say it. Neon signs appear by their side, flashing bright green arrows or the word “GO” or, most concerningly, “change your ways.” It doesn’t look like a way to change to exists. As the darkness gets ever closer, however, Jisung finally gasps and breathes out “there’s another path.”

Sure enough, the turquoise glass hood of a subway station entrance can be seen in the distance, coming at them so fast that they’d only have seconds before they were past it. “How’s that another path? Do you think we’re gonna just drive down the stairs into-”

“You guys can jump out and get in there,” Renjun interrupts. “The dark can’t get you in the few seconds it’ll take to run down into the subway station if you’re just jumping out of the car.”

“But what about-”

The station approaches, perhaps three seconds away. “Go, I’ll find my own way,” Renjun insists. His foot remains on the accelerator, hands clutching the steering wheel so tight Chenle thinks it might break. “Go!” he screams.

Jisung goes, leaving the door wide open and tumbling onto the ground. He rolls once and then he’s on his feet and running. Jeno follows. Closing his eyes tight, Chenle jumps, and then runs down the stairs into the station. Behind them, the sound of the red car fades and then disappears.

The three of them vault over the turnstiles and run down deeper into the subway station, the thing biting at their heels the whole time. On the first platform there is a subway with its doors open and warm yellow light emitting from inside. Words flicker and appear inside. “Congratulations. Enter here to proceed to Level 2.”

\---

When Jaehyun can see again, the plain grey walls of Simon’s room are replaced by bright flashing colour: neon red and gold lights and lanterns adorn a city of beautiful Chinese-style architecture mixed into intimidating dark skyscrapers that flash by in a blur. His hands tighten around motorbike handles, the controls for which come smoothly. None of the other members are anywhere to be seen, and the street he rides down doesn’t seem to have any path branching off it that he can go down. Rain beats down on the whole scene, slicking his hair into his eyes and blurring his vision.

Hunching down over the handlebar, Jaehyun twists the throttle and urges the motorbike on faster. The clock is already visible in the corner of his eye, and this time it starts at 40 minutes. Already, time is extremely precious; especially since he has no idea what he’s supposed to do, or even where the other members are.

Eventually, Jaehyun turns his head to the right and sees another yellow motorbike racing beside him through the gaps between the high-rise buildings. The person on it has white blonde hair and a slim figure - Taeyong, perhaps? On the left, another rider appears on an identical motorbike. When he yells out to them, his voice is drowned by the rain. It seems that they have no choice but to continue riding down the street.

When the street opens up into a courtyard of sorts, the other three motorbikes coming from the other side reveal themselves. Jaehyun skids to a stop at the edge of the courtyard, looking around at the five others who had arrived. Jungwoo to his left, Taeyong to his right. Doyoung, Taeil, and Yuta arranged on the opposite side. No Johnny - that comes with the chilling realisation that game deaths are final not just for the level, but for the entire game. For life, even, he dreads to consider.

Soaked golden cloth falls away from huge, ancient pillars with traditional Korean hanja written as titles on them. “Kick It,” the one in front of him says. He sees Taeil across from him mouth the same words, eyes transfixed on the same thing above him. 

In the middle of the courtyard, the rain stops in mid-air, shudders, and forms itself into words. “Fight 1: Taeil vs. Jaehyun.”

Fight?

A health bar pings into existence above Taeil’s head, and with horror, Jaehyun feels rather than sees the same appear above him. If they’re to escape this level, it seems they’ll have to fight each other. Jaehyun can only hope it’s not to the death, but after the last level, he doubts it. The time left on the counter is 28:06, and from the video games he’s played, that’s barely enough time to get three fights done at all. Let alone more, if that’s what the game asks of them.

Jaehyun grits his teeth and moves forward. He hopes at least a fraction of his apologies can be seen in his eyes before they narrow in concentration, but with the rain beating down between them, he cannot tell.

Something they don’t tell you about fighting is that punching someone in the face hurts your fist almost as much as it hurts their face. The impact sends a shock down through Jaehyun’s hand and into his arm, and tears some of the skin off his knuckles. It’s somewhat like punching a solid wall, except that wall is your friend and he’s reeling from the impact, clutching his cheek and staring at you in betrayal. Jaehyun had caught him off guard, and he’d caught himself off guard as well: never in a million years would he have imagined that he would punch Taeil, not for self-defense, not to win a stupid game. Not even if it was life-or-death.

Now it seems that a real death puts all that into a whole new terrible perspective.

With Jaehyun still battling his own conscience, Taeil kicks him square in the stomach, then pulls back his arm to hit him again. Vomit rising in his throat, Jaehyun reaches out with full force and grabs hold of his head, putting him in a chokehold. Before he realises what he’s trying to do, Taeil has aimed a kick square into his crotch and ducked away. 

“If it has to be one of us,” Jaehyun pants out, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry but I can’t let you win.”

Taeil doesn’t reply, just closes in again with fists flying.

Amidst the blows and the effort of blocking them, a resolve settles into Jaehyun. This isn’t going to end if one of them doesn’t get knocked out: this is clear from the health bars, still almost halfway green. And Jaehyun isn’t one to give up, no matter how kind he thinks he is. Holding back, at this point, only means that maybe none of them will get through this level.

“I’m sorry,” he utters again. And kicks him, hard, in the chest, so that he falls over. On the ground, Taeil gasps and tries to stand up again, but Jaehyun’s foot is on his chest, and he’s bending over to hover over his face. “I’m sorry.” 

Jaehyun hits him again, hard, across the face, once, twice, three times. The health bar flickers, turns red, disappears. Taeil’s muscles relax and his head hits the concrete floor with an unnaturally hollow thud. Ears ringing, Jaehyun looks up to see the rest of the members staring at him like he’d become a monster.

“Winner: Jaehyun.” The rain stops once again, reassembling into the next announcement. “Fight 2: Taeyong vs Doyoung.”

\---

Xiaojun wakes up staring at the unfamiliar top bunk bed above him, comfortably wrapped in grey sheets. The curtains are shut, and it looks to be dark outside, but the room is bathed in a warm golden light from the lamps overhead. The faint sound of a television drones on in the background, intermingled with loud shuffling around occuring on the bed above him.

Suddenly, an entire torso swings itself over the edge of the railing, and a face comes to be right about level with Xiaojun’s, except upside-down. For a second, they both stare at each other, perplexed, before Yangyang shouts “Xiaojun! Bro!” and half-deafens him.

Within seconds, the rest of Yangyang’s body has followed, and he’s made his way into Xiaojun’s bed to hug him so tightly he can barely breathe. “I can’t believe we made it, we must be safe now, this place looks so nice-”

Xiaojun hugs him back, but is otherwise silent. The comfort of the room doesn’t match up with the idea that this should be Level 2, as the text on the screens had said. Nor does it comfort him enough to forget that Lucas hadn’t made it into this level, and the four other supposedly surviving members were nowhere to be seen either. Over Yangyang’s shoulder, he combs his eyes over the rest of the room. An old-fashioned computer, several framed images, a whiteboard with scribblings all over it, and scattered sketches and notes all over a quaint wooden desk. He pats Yangyang on the back awkwardly, and after that doesn’t work, physically struggles and manages to get out of his embrace.

“Look, there’s something written on the whiteboard over there,” Xiaojun says, getting up to investigate it. The notes seem to be mostly about some theoretical physics, things about the universe bending and the possibilities of space travel. Nestled in some corners, and on the further papers he finds on the desk, are possible coordinates of entry points to such a phenomenon, and drawings of what looks like a structure to get up… somewhere. 

The door to the room is flung open loudly, and Xiaojun looks up with a gasp. While poring over the notes, Yangyang had slipped outside, and it seems that he now returns with news. 

“Hendery and Kun are in the room next door, and Ten and Winwin are in the far room!” Hearing this, Xiaojun lets out a great sigh of relief for the rest of the group. What’s left unsaid, that Lucas isn’t here, is a punch in the gut, but he ignores the urge to grieve. If they don’t want to end up like him, there’s no time to waste. 

“Found anything else?” he urges.

Yangyang thinks for a moment. “There’s also a living room down the end of the hallway, but I was too busy talking to everyone else to visit it. And I wanted to let you know first. Want to go see what’s going on there?”

Xiaojun nods, already getting up. “There’s definitely something we have to do, and there’s some clues here, but exploring the whole house must help. Come on!”

The hallway down to the living room is dim, with only low, weak lights casting thin glows around them at intervals along the way. In contrast, the living room is brightly lit, the faint blue glow of the television illuminating one side. An old woman lies across the couch, asleep. Oblivious to her inattention, the television plays on. “A wormhole has been sighted near Earth in our solar system…” the reporter explains. “..scientific community remains quite shocked that there actually is a wormhole-”

The woman stirs, and turns around a little so that her sleeping face is turned towards them. A small child walks in from beside the couch, dragging a teddy bear behind him. He taps her shoulder, and her eyes fly open. 

Pitch black wells stare back at Xiaojun and Yangyang, and her mouth opens to scream.

The television flickers, buzzes, and is frozen, stuck on the one image of the wormhole, spiralling on and on through space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I promise dream is my favourite unit don't hurt me for doing that to them)

**Author's Note:**

> Updates every weekend! Please leave kudos and yell at me in the comments.


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